Officials Seek Money To Aid Middle Schools

Middle schools, the long-neglected stepchildren of public education, need special attention and a good dose of cash from the Florida Legislature next year, officials said Tuesday.

In a conference with members of the Broward County Legislative Delegation, county school officials said a remedy must be found for a flaw in the state financing formula that stunts the growth of middle school programs.

The officials met at the Governmental Center in Fort Lauderdale to chart proposed reforms so that the county would reap what they consider a fairer, or larger, share of the overall funding for education programs.

Mark Seigle, Broward`s associate school superintendent for government affairs, said it is time for legislators to pump some money into the formula to help finance a seventh period in the middle schools.

``We have the PREP program for the elementary grades. We have the RAISE program for the high school grades,`` Seigle said. ``It`s the middle school programs that have been suffering the most.``

Seigle said part of the problem is that a quirk in the formula that doles out state financing also serves to discourage individual school systems from investing their own dollars into middle school programs.

``We have no flexibility in the middle schools,`` Seigle said.

Tom Larkin, associate superintendent for business affairs, explained the cost of programs in grades four to eight serves as the standard against which the state determines its contribution toward more expensive, specialized programs.

Among those programs are classes ranging from kindergarten to education for the profoundly handicapped.

If more local money is invested in the middle school years, Larkin said, it causes the financing balance to shift. As a result, school districts then lose money for the special programs and must subsidize those.

Last year, for example, a statewide shift in the balance -- or program ``weights,`` as they are called -- caused Broward to lose $5 million in funding for kindergarten to the third-grade level, Larkin said.

Seigle and Larkin said they would like to see the program weights revised so that they reflect the true cost to run special programs.

Currently, they said, districts have to subsidize many of the programs with money that might otherwise go to teacher pay raises.

Seigle said he would also like to see the formula changed so that it more closely reflects the higher cost of running schools in urban areas such as Broward.

The difference could mean millions of dollars, officials said.

Rep. Walter Young, D-Pembroke Pines, said changing the formula generally becomes political because it pits the state`s urban districts against rural districts. With a limited pot of money, he said, a change that would be a boon to Broward would necessarily be a bane to another area.

``Politically, it`s tough,`` Young said. ``It`s more than tough to try to get more than what they think your fair share is.``